September 2008 Editor's Picks: Products from LiquaJet and Yokogawa

LiquaJet Technology mills resistant materials
LiquaJet (Moorestown, NJ), a new company created by the Jet Pulverizer Company (Moorestown), offers jet-milling services based on a new, proprietary technology. The technology uses high-purity compressed liquid nitrogen rather than compressed gas. The compressed liquid nitrogen expands after entering the jet-milling chamber and provides greater pressure and force than compressed gas does.

The process mills materials that were previously ungrindable. For example, the technology grinds plastic and polymers that could previously be reduced to 100–200 µm to less than 30 µm, according to the company.

The LiquaJet technology contains no moving parts, prevents contamination, and does not create additional heat. The technology minimizes material loss and produces high yields that comply with good manufacturing practices. The company is inspected by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Yokogawa Corporation of America Production-control system has new features
Yokogawa Corporation of America (Newnan, GA) has added pharmaceutical batch-control capabilities to its “Centum VP” integrated production-control system. New features include recipe-management and process-management functions in addition to the application’s unit-supervision and process-control tools.

The Centum VP software now provides a configurable unit faceplate that lets users monitor and execute batches through an interface. The application also features standard displays for product overview, product control, and unit control for recipe and product selection. The displays offer automatic, current documentation of the batch logic.

In addition, the software separates recipe data from equipment data and provides unit-based exception handling. The latter function allows batch engineers to create modular procedures for main production activities, engineer exception handling through unit monitors, and interrupt processing if necessary. Thus, automation engineers can execute failure-handling logic one time, rather than during each phase of production.